Gusts of Fate
by ellabellbee
Summary: "On this island, statistics were not his friends."  Jack reflects on fate, miracles, and whether rescue will come.  Written in Season 2, before the fate of the raft is discovered by the beach dwellers, and the audience thinks the island is just an island.


**I'm finally archiving my fic here. Originally posted on LJ 2005-12-12. **

**Set after the raft leaves in Season 1, before the fate of the raft is discovered in Season 2.  
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><p>Normally it's Kate that can sit on the shore for hours - her loose man's dress shirt trailing behind her in the wind, her long loose curls tossed by the gusts occasionally framing her face, and her feet plunged beyond the top layer into the cooler sand below.<p>

She could look at the horizon for hours, barely blinking, in almost a meditative state. Sometimes a smile would play around the corners of her lips at the sight of Aaron laughing as the wind splashed the ocean spray into his face; other times she wouldn't react to outside noises, and wouldn't even flinch when sky opened up and raindrops soaked her through to the bone. Every once in a while a few notes would escape her breath and float away in the breeze before anyone else could discern tune from it.

Charlie once remarked it was poetry.

Jack never understood poetry. The allusions were lost on him - a phoenix as a Christmas tree; a dandelion as a soldier - he was a man of science where equations always worked out and probability and statistics were his friends.

They weren't his friends on this island.

He knew how big the ocean was, and how many uninhabited islands there were in the Polynesians alone, never mind the rest of the Pacific ocean.

On this island, statistics were not his friends.

Yet he admired her persistence - watching for the planes sent by Oceanic that didn't know where to look and the rescue boats that were never going to come.

Unless the raft found rescue.

But even that hope was small: they had no real idea of where to go and little hope of finding their way back. Were they even able to harness the wind? Yet Jack saw Kate watch the horizon for hours at a time, waiting for sign of rescue. Her belongings had never made it all the way to the caves. As soon as the threat had vanished, the sand dwellers moved back to the shore.

He approached her from the front, as always, offering gifts of water and fruit hoping to get a few words out of her, a conversation, but her eyes rarely left where the water met the clouds. So it surprised him when when he walked by and her eyes were closed, that small smile playing on her lips. Even then, before he had come close she started speaking, though he couldn't be sure it was to him.

"The wind is coming from another direction today." Her tongue darted out and licked the salt from her sun-cracked lips. "It's cooler, I can feel the spray." She opened her eyes looking back out to the water. "I keep watching for rescue, scared to death of what's going to happen if they do arrive. She finally looked at Jack straight and honestly. "Even if they do find us, what'll happen to us when we go back?"

Jack shifted uncomfortably in the sand form a few feet away, unsure of how to respond. When she said 'us', who did that include?

She gazed back out into the ocean and let the sad smile appear once more. "I've sat out here for what, two months? Everyday? Watching for some sign that someone's out there and never having any payoff? I haven't even seen a wave out of place since we got here." She stood and brushed off the seat of her cargo pants and stood for a moment, her hair whipping her face. When she finally spoke again, it was with a note of finality and defeat. "I'm moving to the caves."

Jack's eyebrows extended to his hairline and his mind begged to make sense of her betrayal to the forcefully blown waves, the sand and the sky. "But why?"

Kate looked at him again, her hair swirling around her. "Because there's no such thing as miracles." She turned again and walked away, a few grains of sand carried back to him and burning his exposed skin.

Jack's mind was halted and racing, images and flashed appearing but none making sense. Patients that should have died that lived, people that could dance that never should have been able to walk... all described as miracles... but were they? He was a man of physics, not philosophy. The anatomy, physiology and morphology of his studies allowed him to see the victims as problems to fix with the tools at his fingertips.

Here they needed a boat or plane to pass by. How could he fix that problem?

The news of Kate's move sent shocks through the gossip chain, but what disturbed the island's fragile web of faith the most was Kate's absence from the beach. So Jack sat there instead.

Jack - who never understood poetry - would sit, surrounded by water-bottles and fruit for hours until his gaze grew blurry and his muscles stiff. It wasn't natural. His feet felt cold in the wet sand and the fine grains itched wherever they landed. The cruel breeze whipped the sand at his face. He wasn't happy, but he was watching.

Jack was usually the only one to visit Kate when she watched, but he got a multitude of visitors. People brought him fish and fruit. People tried to relieve him. Said they could take shifts. Jack just shook his head. "I'm okay for now. Maybe later." But his back grew stiff and his eyes became strained. As a doctor, he was always moving, and barely ever had the opportunity to sit down for long periods of time. It was unnatural for him. He wondered how Kate did it for the first 40 days. She was used to running, but then again, she could adapt to any situation. Her body would just conform, mold to whatever it needed to.

Jack didn't have that grace.

Charlie was the only one that ever sat with him. He was the only one that ever ignored Jack's silent pleas to leave him alone. Or maybe he was the only one that didn't notice the non-verbal cues. So when he was especially bored or wanted to just have someone to listen, Charlie found Jack.

"I think he's starting to focus his eyes now. I mean, I understand that's he's still less than a month old, but I think he recognizes me. Makes me feel good, you know? Having someone look up to me again. When he gets old enough I'm going to teach him how to play guitar. We'll be saved by then. Which will be good because I'm going to buy him..." It was the same thing every time. Charlie would talk and ramble without any purpose or endgame. He didn't want anything out of Jack. He just wanted to have someone beside him. Company. To not be alone.

It was a little bit of a surprise to Charlie when Jack started laughing. A laugh that was between humour and desperation, his eyes creased and his head shaking back and forth, trying to speak between gasps of air. "What makes you so sure?"

Charlie sat in confusion. "That I can teach him guitar? Well, my brother taught me and I got better than him..."

"No. What makes you so sure that we'll be rescued?"

Charlie took the equivalent of a step back while sitting down. "We just will be. The raft will make it, and then they're going to come and save us." He frowned slightly in disbelief. "You don't think that they'll find us?"

Jack's smile watered down and he shrugged his shoulders. "No."

"Why?"

"Because there's no such thing as miracles," he muttered turning back to the waves, echoing the sentiments of the other person to sit on the beach, watching for what he believed would never come.

"Sure there are."

Jack looked back to Charlie in disbelief. "There are," he answered sarcastically.

"Sure there are! We're alive aren't we? On a tropical island with enough food to feed us. We have shelter and water and medicine and a doctor." Charlie shrugged his shoulders. "Of course there's miracles. You'd have to be fool not to believe." Charlie paused, grabbing his empty water-bottle. "I'm going to go fill up. You want anything?"

Jack shook his head. "Nah. I'm going to sit here a while longer."

Charlie left Jack to sit alone in his thoughts, and they whirled in his head faster than the pace on the island should have allowed them. Fate vs. free choice. Free will against destiny. He believed in a man's choice - that nothing was predetermined. Was it luck that led him here? Did miracles really exist?

The thoughts were too complex for his sun-logged brain, and he closed his eyes, just breathing in the salt air. The wind caught the waves just right, and the spray landed on him leaving a thin layer of dampness that he could never fully wipe away.

On this island, statistics and probability were not his friends. They told him that there was very little chance of them ever getting rescued. So then, if they did get rescued, was that a miracle? And if a boat came tomorrow, was that predetermined?

Jack got up and grabbed his now empty water-bottle, and brushed the sand off his pants. He squinted to the sun, straining against the light, willing himself to see what would never come. Or if it did come, it would come in its own time, and sitting on the beach watching was never going to make it hurry.

He walked away then, defeated. Maybe the miracle would come for someone else.

When on the beach later, he often looked at the spot he should have been sitting - the empty spot Kate should have been sitting.

It's too bad he wasn't watching the water instead of the vacant sand, for anyone looking would have seen the mast on the horizon for just a little while before it turned and sped beyond the survivor's hopes.

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><p><strong><em>'Cause I am due for a miracle<em>**  
><strong><em> I'm waiting for a sign<em>**  
><strong><em> I'll stare straight into the sun<em>**  
><strong><em> And I won't close my eyes<em>**  
><strong><em> Till I understand or go blind<em>**  
><strong> -Staring at the Sun, Thrice<strong>


End file.
